Star Struck

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I have never been a star struck person for me they are just human being who have had the luck and in some case the talent to become famous. After all we all started the same way out of the womb of our mothers. Some may have arrived in privileged surroundings but they are no better than you or I.


I remember the staff at Goldman Sachs when Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger visited the office. Those middle-aged ladies were acting as though they were thirteen and Justin Beiber had arrived. I continued to work ignoring a man who has since left the state of California in a mess. My instinct was right and I still believe he needs acting lessons.


So you will be surprised to know I was once star struck. I had just finished the Vogue cover shoot with photographer David Bailey. It was David who in the nineteen sixties made people like Twiggy famous. We had agreed to work on a Japanese advertisement reminiscent of Curt Jurgens in The Blue Angel. I never saw the finished product but I played it but like Curt and Tonio from I Pagliacci composed by Ruggiero Leonavallo.


Meeting for dinner at Mr Chow’s was David, his then wife Marie Helvin she and I were on the front cover of the Vogue issue. John Frieda the hairdresser and his then wife Lulu had joined us. It was Lulu who made me speechless. I had for years been a fan but to sit down with her and listen to her talk about life growing up in Scotland was intriguing. She had become part of my artistic intelligence over the years. It is one of those moments that sculpture how I perceive the world. It wasn’t just because of her performance in To Sir with Love. She was real, to use a Scottish expression ‘pure dead brilliant’.


Little did I know a few years later we would both work on a show at the Royal Albert Hall. Of course she was headlining I mere Tonio the clown madly in love with an incredible artist.

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